The present invention relates generally to agricultural implements and, more particularly, to an apparatus for recollecting residual commodity from a fill hopper of an air seeder filling system.
An air seeder is an agricultural implement that is commonly used to plant usually a seed crop in a large field. Air seeders typically have centrally located hoppers for seed and fertilizer which distributes them through an air stream to individual seed rows. It is convenient to fill, easy to clean out and move. Any crop that can be grown from seeds—which might vary is size from oilseeds to corn, can be sewn by an air seeder.
The seed and fertilizer hoppers are usually carried on a large cart located behind or in front of the seeder. The air stream is created by a high capacity fan mounted on the cart which blows air through pipes located under the grain and fertilizer tank. Seed and fertilizer are metered out from the hoppers by a meter wheel that is turning in a ratio set by the operator for the proper seed rate or seed density. The seeds enter the pipe in the airstream and follow the pipes which terminate in the seedbed. Openers pulled through the soil make the opening where the seeds are placed. They are made of steel in the shape of points, discs or cultivator shovels. Once placed in the seed bed, the air is blown out the opening in the soil and the seed and fertilizer remain. The seeder can then pack the soil tight to retain moisture near the seed and harrow the furrows so the field is not rough.
A typical air seeder has an agricultural commodity cart (“air cart”) comprising at least one, and commonly two, three or more tanks for carrying various agricultural products like seed and fertilizer. Although not always present, commonly there is a conveyor mounted on the cart for transferring agricultural product (“commodity”) from transport vehicles into the tanks. It is commonly seen as more convenient to mount a conveyor on the cart rather than on each transport vehicle, or maneuver a portable conveyor as a separate implement altogether.
The conveyor is typically mounted on a pivot mechanism configured to allow it to be moved from a transport position, where the bottom end of the conveyor is raised for transport, to an operating position where the bottom end is lowered to receive a commodity from the transport vehicle, and is typically resting on the ground. The pivot mechanism also allows the conveyor to be maneuvered so that a spout on the upper discharge end of the conveyor can be maneuvered to direct the commodity from the conveyor into the filling hatch for each tank. Cart loading conveyors commonly include a hopper at the bottom intake end to receive agricultural product from the transport vehicle. Conventional cart conveyors typically comprise simply a straight tube with an auger inside to convey the product, and the hopper is simply mounted on the lower end.
It is generally desirable to clean out the hopper when changing from one agricultural product to another in order to minimize contamination of the tanks with different agricultural products. On conventional cart conveyors, it is often possible to simply rotate the hopper on the conveyor tube such that the hopper is oriented downward. The auger can then be rotated in reverse so that material in the tube falls out of the lower end of the tube and into the inverted hopper and onto the ground. Other approaches include a hopper constructed with a cleanout port in the bottom of the hopper so that the auger can be reversed and the majority of material will fall out the cleanout port onto the ground. Some manual pushing of material is typically required to completely clean out the hopper.
These conventional approaches to emptying the fill hopper are generally effective in removing the residual commodity, these approaches are wasteful in that the residual product is simply casted onto the ground. To avoid this waste, many end-users will place a pail or similar collector on the ground and raise the fill hopper above the pail. To empty to the residual commodity into the pail, the fill hopper must be reoriented, i.e., tilted, so that the residual commodity runs out of the fill hopper and into the pail. This tilting of the fill hopper can be laborious and awkward as the fill hopper is generally heavy and bulky and, thus, difficult to maneuver. And, depending on the amount of residual commodity in the fill hopper, repositioning the fill hopper can be particularly cumbersome. Similarly, the pail, which is commonly a larger container, i.e., 20 L, can also be difficult to maneuver.